


Song for the Living

by amorekay



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Dark, Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-20
Updated: 2011-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorekay/pseuds/amorekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is you. Lying in your foxhole alone as the tendrils of ice creep in past your boots and your clothes and press against your skin, in a desperate caress, shrinking blood vessels and killing the last of your heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song for the Living

This is you. Lying in your foxhole alone as the tendrils of ice creep in past your boots and your clothes and press against your skin, in a desperate caress, shrinking blood vessels and killing the last of your heat. You want to die here, in this half-dug foxhole, because the cost of existing is too expensive for your exhausted bones. You want to die because you can’t imagine getting up from here and going on.

God, she had said with her hands wound tight and fretful, would never give such a painful gift.

The dank and steady calm of surrendering has finally started to settle over you when Heffron pulls you up. Spina has been shouting in your ears, the sound muffled by your confusion, a pounding of syllables that you can’t follow. But Heffron’s hand is almost warm against your stiff sleeve, and you jerk awake at the touch. “Come on,” he must be saying, “come on.”

You get up on autopilot, follow the familiar call of chaos into the battlefield, and your hands are thick with warm blood before you even remember what your job is. Medic, you think, as the cry comes through the forest, and suddenly you want to vomit. God, she had said with her eyes flickering dim, would never give such a painful gift.

Shame burns hot through your stomach and warms your body as you remember what you’ve just done. What you’ve hesitated on. What could have been lost as you sat in your foxhole and chatted with death. Winters is telling you to get some food, get a hot meal, and the final rush of guilt warms you enough that you can run to the jeep and finish your job. You have a patient moaning in pain here, a comrade terrified of the death you could have welcomed so easily, and you must prove to him that death will not be visiting here tonight. You wish, with all your heart, that you could believe this.

God, she had said with all the conviction of a believer, would never give such a painful gift.


End file.
